Millenials leaving the Church

While there are numerous articles trying to explain the mass exodus of the Millennials from the church, this one points at sex.

“Excuse my boldness, but I think the leading factor in why millennials are leaving the church is sexual sin.”

“The norm for youth groups across the country is to have all of their upperclassmen actively engaged in sex, or pornography, or both. It is rare, youth ministers tell me, to find a male high school student that has not had sex or been exposed to pornography. And it is nearly as rare to find a female upperclassmen that is still a virgin or abstaining from “not all the way” sexual activity. The message youth ministers want parents to hear is that they need to assume that their sons and daughters are playing with sex because they all are. In a culture that praises the self and is drowning in sexual sin, it is easy to see why millennials have lost the wonder of God and grown tired of His church.”

The author hits the nail on the head, but doesn’t have any solutions. We should love them, embrace them and help them not sin?

“Let us gently invade their lives. They are a passionate army ready to change the world. They are not apathetic as many were in the previous generation.”

What does that even mean?

Interfaith Marriages on the Rise

According to this research on marriage trends, 41% of Protestants are marrying outside of their faith, while Hindus, Muslims and Mormans largely marry within their faith.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that a good way to ensure the long term viability of a community is to encourage it’s members to marry and have families. The Church is actively NOT doing this.

In fact, singles are largely ignored in the Church. Yes, there are youth programs, that routinely teach boys and girls to avoid each other. Then there are college aged programs that age out by the late 20s. At that point the Church seems to think everyone should be happily married, while at no point have the done anything more than keep everyone separated.

“There is little debate that American adults are far less likely to be married than they were two generations ago. In 1950, married couples represented 78 percent of households in the United States. In 2011, the US Census Bureau reported, that percentage had dropped to 48 percent. In 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 124.6 million Americans 16 years and older were single, or 50.2 percent of the population, compared with 37.4 percent of the population in 1976. ”

So ultimately the Church needs to reach out to single people and figure out how to either get people married or exist in a culture where single people meet their sexual needs outside of marriage.